


Inverse Dysphoria

by kira892



Series: Asylumstuck [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Rule 63, asylumstuck, femkarkat, yup im calling this au asylumstuck B)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira892/pseuds/kira892
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was never really much that Sollux couldn't live without.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inverse Dysphoria

 

There was never really much that Sollux couldn't live without.

 

He didn't understand it, needing something, after all, there wasn't much to desire when one's entire existence consisted of little more than the monotonous, listless cycle of day to day life in hell. Hah. His world back in those first few months after he was "born" had been so, pathetically sad and tiny, he wouldn't even have had nary a clue what hell was if one nurse that probably had the only shred of decency and humanity in the entire place hadn't taken pity on him and taught him how to read and speak.

 

Her name was lost to him now, perhaps he never really knew it in the first place but regardless, Sollux was and would always be grateful to her, even if just a bit. Despite having the same amount of unwashable blood she had on her hands as all the others by being involved in that place, at least she'd been capable of experiencing pity for the sad, disgusting creature they kept in room 22 who used to know nothing outside the instinctive urge to scream, to make garbled sounds and pathetic whimpers whenever the men in the white coats pinned him down to an operating table and split him open like a helpless frog.

 

She was a lovely woman, pale skinned, willowy and tall. Her head sat tall and graceful centered atop her thin, graceful neck, all delicate bones, huge eyes and vivid red lips framed by a soft halo of pale, cornsilk blonde hair even lighter than her skin. It flowed beneath her white nurse's hat, a flaxen waterfall that ended in immaculately curled tips floating above her shoulders. Sollux remembered being severely fascinated by it, knowing it was nice to look at before he could put words to the concept. She stood out amongst the others, not only because she'd been positively lovely, but because she was the only one who looked at him differently. She didn't look at him like all the other white coats did, she didn't look at him like he was a thing to be observed or repulsed by. Whenever he cried, she never glanced at him in that baffled way that all the others did, like they were surprised that he could feel, that he could think.

 

He always saw it lingering in her eyes whenever she handed them tools to cut him open and sew him back up. He was nothing but a mindless mess of tortured misery back then with no concept of anything, no words to put to his thoughts, his pain. Words were a foreign thing to him even if he heard thousands of them pass methodically in cold, clipped tones from the men in the white coats as they murmured to each other. He understood not why sounds fell out of their mouths and why they seemed to make them do things, put something down, pick something up, shove a chunk of cloth into his throat when he wouldn't stop screaming as they prodded at his insides.

 

But he slowly, slowly understood why sounds fell out from the others' mouths. He was aware that he wasn't alone, that he wasn't the only one caged and hurting. Sometimes they passed by his room, sometimes he passed by theirs and almost always they would either be huddled near the barred doors, screaming and begging as they thrashed and twisted or screaming and begging as they were dragged like broken sacks of mad, subhuman garbage, shameless of their desperation, their despair as the stone-faced men guided them to another corner of hell they hadn't seen yet.

 

He learned. He learned one set of words in particular, because he didn't need to be human to understand the depth of tortured misery he shared with everyone else trapped in that place, they were all part of it as it was part of all of them.

 

So when one day, he'd uttered _'Kill me'_ out of nowhere, he understood exactly what he meant.

The look the beautiful woman had given him that day was one he would always remember. The thing he constantly saw in her eyes imploded within the bright pink depths of their prison, branching out as quickly and prominently like cracks on fragile china and she gasped, dropping the small towel she'd been using to wipe up the blood gushing out of one set of his stitches. They'd forced it apart and kept it open for hours before sealing it back up, testing the limits of his impossible ability to stay alive, it refused to stop bleeding and when she dropped the towel, it flopped down beside the small mountain of drenched ones sitting on a small mat on the floor. She sat there, frozen with that look on her face for several long seconds and when she snapped out of it, Sollux felt desperate. She didn't ignore him like the other white coats did whenever someone pleaded like he just did, that meant she understood. So when she twitched, perhaps moving to stand up and move away, he immediately latched onto her wrist.

 

"Kill me" he begged again.

 

Her rosy eyes widened even more, lips pursed tight as she absorbed his raspy, garbled voice and Sollux grabbed her other wrist, almost falling over when he lunged forward to get closer.

 

"Kill...me. Kill m-me. Kill me kill me kill me. P…lea-se kill me. _Please_."

 

He felt frantic, restless, a child screaming in birth, screaming for the pain of being alive to go away. Of course at that point, he had no idea what a child was, and what a "real" birth was. But she did and she seemed to see him exactly like that. Sollux felt his entire chest lurch in fear when her face crumpled. He didn't know what it meant but he felt like she was about to call for them, to have them drag him off to wherever it is that those who'd screamed the loudest and thrashed the hardest get taken to, to that place where very few ever came back and he'd been terrified.

 

She said nothing however, just shook her head, her gaze shaky as she took in his trembling lip, his wide, terrified eyes and she grabbed him back, slowly, carefully pushing his wrists down and away from hers. Then she grabbed his face, her touch soft and warm, so unlike anything he'd ever felt before that it made him pause. She looked straight into his eyes and shook her head.

 

"No."

 

He simply stared back, not understanding until she reached over and brushed some hair out of his eyes, the simple gesture conveying what she was trying to say so clearly that it made something else in him ache in a way he’d never felt before.

 

"No..." she said again slowly, thumbs stroking feather light against the stitches on his face.

His breath hitched, a pained sound that no words could ever describe rattling his lungs as drops of damp warmth welled up in his eyes so fast they were cascading down his cheeks the second after they built behind his eyeballs.

 

"No."

 

She whispered one last time as she carefully pulled him into the first hug he'd ever experienced and he willingly curled down towards her, muffling his sobs and gasps against her shoulder.

 

He guessed he needed her once, no, he _did_ need her once.

 

Extra food snuck unto his tray, an occasional touch, even one as simple as a hand on his wrist or fingers combing his hair out of his eyes, a warm smile, a soft voice, patience to guide a blank, mutated canvas from a pathetic, pained nothing into something that could appreciate every single one of those things. She was conducive to all of them.

 

She gave him a lot, taught him how to speak, how to think, how to feel. She made him feel whatever small, fragile version of happiness someone in his position could feel and it meant a lot.

 

However...she also taught him how to experience a kind of pain worse than any he ever had before and after that he didn't need her anymore.

 

He remembered how much happier she seemed one day, it was the most he'd ever seen her be. Her smile was blinding and the first thing she'd done the second she saw him was fold him into her arms. He accepted the embrace happily but not without curiosity and when he tilted his head at her in inquiry she merely beamed wider.

 

"You're extra....smiley today." he told her.

 

She pinched his cheeks lightly and practically danced over to the sad, tiny excuse of a barred little window on his wall. She scrubbed some of the grime building on the frosted glass with her sleeve before murmuring a "whoops" and producing a cleaning cloth tucked into her pocket.

 

"I got lotsa reasons to be happy!" she said without looking at him.

 

"What?" Sollux asked.

 

She looked down at him, eyes a sparkling fuschia in the bright light shining down from the huge flourescent lamp on the ceiling.

 

"I'm having a baby!"

 

Sollux's idea of reproduction and pregnancy was still pretty blurry but still, he knew enough that it took 9 months for a "baby" to grow in its mother's tummy.

 

That was why he was confused, after having have watched her happiness slowly balloon like her stomach did, when she showed up sometime near month 7, once again slender and with all the accompanying happiness drained right out of her. She deteriorated so fast and so frighteningly much that it frightened him. It felt like only days for her to change from one severely wounded still trapped in shock of her injury to a hollow, frail shell of a former human. Her smiles made the immediate descent from seldom to rare to non-existant. With the vacancy that has then permeated her entire being, his world shrank down once more to the 4 white, lonely corners of his cell. Occasionally she drifted in and out of it, saying broken, disjointed words that made barely any sense. What he managed to understand was already obvious, she'd lost her baby and he thought that perhaps she'd been mumbling about how. It was really hard to decode because not only did the words themselves make little sense, they came out of her mouth in thick slurrs, breath acrid, reeking of something bitter and strong.

 

He tried to help her of course, to pull her out of the grave she'd fallen into and bring back the happy, beautiful angel that once dug him out of his, he tried really hard. But at the most, all he'd managed to do was make her see him on occasion. She was like a ghost, present but never really there and it hurt Sollux. A lot. everytime her eyes saw right through him, void of the warmth they used to hold, the kind that no one and nothing with eyes ever had and ever will look him with.

 

Not long after that, she was gone, without barely a goodbye.

 

 He'd simply woken up one morning and there was a thin, silver chain sitting by his pillow. There was a tiny, unfamiliar pendant hanging at the end of it. It had been heavy in his palm when he picked it up and he squinted at the curved shapes arranged in a circle around a bare space in the centre where a simple pink gem sat. He'd never seen the pendant before but it only took a second for it to click, the moment he saw the rosy pink of the gem he'd known. His face was already crumpled in pain even before the first few memories of the silver chain peeking out of her collar popped into his brain. It was a horrible avalanche, her smile, her kindness, her empathy. Sollux hurled the pendant across the room and wailed when it didn't shatter against the wall as he hoped.

 

He cried for hours and had anyone been around to witness him, at the end of those hours, they would have seen how he stood up, crossed the room and scooped the pendant and chain in his palms once more. He turned it over and over in his hand. The pattern and the gem was only on one side, on the other letters were engraved, spelling out the word _Lalonde_ in elegant, curved writing. He'd stared at it in silence, the faint ray of moonlight shining in through the window bouncing off the pink gem and casting a faint rosy circle on his cheek.

 

No one who would've seen could have predicted the things that flashed through his head then, the things he felt, but it would be easy to guess... what with the way his face crumpled and he practically fell to the floor, clutching the pendant to his chest as silent tears squeezed out of his eyes. He stayed there til the sun rose, an ugly, sad creature, misunderstood, hated and once again alone.

 

Without her, Sollux reverted back to his previous state...mostly. She’d taught him words, how to use them, how to understand them and with those words, she'd taught him stories; about life, nature, humanity, just as any good teacher would. She taught him how to put names to happiness, simple joy, loneliness, pain, hatred and after she'd gone the last thing all but took over his life. Now that he no longer had to grasp at straws, drowning in all the unknown feelings he'd once felt before she came and pulled him out, Sollux learned to utilize them to his advantage.

 

Hate. He latched onto it, burrowed under everything else it had to offer: spite, pride, indifference. Anger numbed the fear, numbed the crushing loneliness he felt. It consumed him, taught him how to breathe. He knew there wasn't much he could do to get back at the white coats, to give them back even a tenth of what they'd done to him. Existing was the only thing he could do, not letting them beat him, not letting them destroy him even more. He had to keep going, because if he couldn't win, he sure as hell wouldn't lose. He was a nothing, something that wasn't supposed to be. His existence was an abomination, he realized that and promptly decided to spit at fate's face and declare _Fuck you. I know you don't want me here so I'm sticking around._

 

Of course, he was still miserable though hatred had formed a nice, thick armor around him. He learned to hold in his screams, he no longer struggled whenever they dragged him out and pinned him down to another surgery table. But under the near permanent passive mask firmly locked over his face, there was still a pathetic, miserable little boy who craved for something better, who cried every so often in the darkness of his cell, curled around a little scrap of silver that only served to pain him more. It was like a drug to him. It reminded him of what he lost, the brief point in his existence when he was lifted higher than he could have imagined and plunged down just as much. It hurt, it hurt like hell but he refused to let the thing go. Because it was the only reminder he had that though it ended in disaster, there was once something, somebody that made him happy.

 

That was better than nothing. He would rather hurt than forget because he would take anything over going back to the scared, thoughtless creature that he was. What was left of her kept him sane so he held onto it for years. 

 

Said years were spent gradually building walls up, letting some down, building more up and spending bouts of time jumping between doing one and the other. Life was still miserable as shit but at least he was aware of his surroundings now and he'd realized he wasn't completely alone. No one could fully understand of course, because no one was like him, but for the first time, he acknowledged that there were others there with him in that place that could stand shoulder to shoulder to him in terms of the suffering they went through everyday. 

 

There was Aradia, eccentric and quiet whom had earned his respect by offering him hers. She never pried but always listened whenever he felt like letting some of his secrets go. Opening himself up to someone was pretty much out of the question after the lady with the blonde hair but Aradia had made him do the closest thing possible to it.

 

And there was also Feferi, whom he saw very rarely because she had trouble breathing air above water for longer than a few minutes. He was never really sure if he liked the unabashed pity she put on display for him because though he knew she didn't mean to, it sometimes made him feel worse about himself. But only sometimes though, because the floor vents in his cell were connected to the air vents in her own little underground water tank and she sang to him whenever she could. She hadn't been too fond of singing because it made the gills on her neck feel uncomfortable. However when he'd heard her and told her that she had a nice voice, she took to singing all the time and he was very thankful to her for that. Her voice made him feel less alone in the darkness of his cell.

 

Then there was Terezi, whose blindness and mutated form of Synesthesia made for a combination that caused her no discomfort whatsoever in licking his face to "see" him, sure more often than not, she was actually tasting his thoughts and not just his appearance (mutated, mind reading Synesthesia) but he still didn’t mind having her around, the wide, toothy grin that perpetually lingered on her face matched a manic sort of playfulness that bordered something somewhat unsettling. She often “joked” about their white clad keepers getting what they deserved, describing to him in great detail what colors they would smell like as she relayed multiple fantasies of getting together enough starched bed sheets to make nooses for each and every single one and hang them by their necks from the highest rooms in the highest building. He liked that about her.

 

And then…along came the suicidal girl who was shit out of luck because her body hates her every bit as she hates it. He would probably never forget the day he “met” her.

 

Word travelled fast amongst the “patients” whenever a new addition was added to the group, or maybe word just travelled fast to him. Aradia somehow always knew these things, though if she knew because she was really good at eavesdropping or because the unstable timeloops she kept throwing herself into and transporting her to random points in time inside the asylum allowed her to see things for herself, he didn’t know. All he knew was that she was always sure to tell him whenever she saw him next, so he’d known about the new girl way before he met her.

 

At that point, the whitecoats have all but grown tired of him. He was one of the first few, he was aware of that. Once their collection of freaks expanded, they'd more or less left Sollux to rot in his cell, occasionally dropping in to check on him. They experimented on him less and less, til that faded to mere check ups, seeing if his pulse was still there, if he was still breathing okay, that kind of nonsense. Eventually though, the ocassional visit for his vitals stopped altogether. Most of the contact he got was from Aradia and Terezi, who were both cunning enough to sneak him out of his cell sometimes and take him wandering around the halls, to the kitchen to eat or down to the underground to see Feferi.

 

Aradia had mentioned the new girl in passing, during one of her visits when he'd asked her for any updates, not expecting an answer.

 

"What's wrong with her?" he'd asked. Aradia shrugged, tracing the jagged mess of patterns the stitches in his arm formed.

 

"Suicidal and depressed, I think? That's some of what i heard when they were filling in her paper work down at the lobby. And I also heard her screaming her head off when they locked her in her room, poor thing." Aradia murmured, full lips curving down into a small frown.

 

Sollux stared blankly ahead with an unsympathetic air and scoffed softly. "Just another addition to god's collection of freaks."

 

She was of absolutely no interest to Sollux, at least not until a few months later, after they were done fucking her up til she was exactly like everyone else in that place.

 

His cell wasn't terribly big, but it was terribly empty and if they so wished, they could've stuffed 10 other patients in there with him. Perhaps the asylum was finally filled up to the brim with abominations and they'd run out of room, or perhaps they'd just really totally forgot he existed but no matter the reason, Sollux found himself waking up one night to the sound of muffled screaming right outside his door. He bolted up right, wondering what the hell was going on and flinched when the door burst open, bouncing against the dirty concrete wall with a loud thud.

 

Given that he'd spent a majority of his life, staying up late at night, curled up in the shadows, waiting to die or go insane, his vision was well adjusted to the dark and it was easy for him to see the two burly men darkening his door. His instinctive reaction was fear, an overwhelming amount of it, caused by him thinking that they'd finally come to put him down because he was of no use whatsoever to anyone anymore.

 

But then he saw the girl thrashing and struggling futilely between them, arms locked tight around herself by a sturdy straitjacket. Long, unruly strands of raven hair sat in a chaotic mess on her head, they reached down like crooked talons all the way down to her jaw, obstructing most of her face from him. However, Sollux could easily make out the thick white cloth stuffed into her mouth, the source of the muffled screaming.

 

One of the burly men holding her hostage grunted and with a mighty shove, sent the girl sprawling face first into the floor.

 

"There, told ya if you didn't quit it, we were gonna take away the padded cell. You wanna hurt yourself so bad? Knock yourself out. Bash your head against the concrete til ya feel better you little cunt."

 

The door slammed shut with a violent rattle and Sollux found himself alone with the girl, who lay curled up on the ground, squirming in pain and making sharp, broken noises behind the gag. It took him a minute to place the sound and Sollux let himself sigh softly when his ears finally recognized the sound of agonized crying. Slowly, he pulled his knees to his chest and just sat there, letting the fragile tips of what could have been sympathy brush against his conscious. His head jerked a little in interest when the girl started squirming, slowly at first then restlessly, growing more and more anxious and aggressive with her movements the more of them she made. Soon enough, she managed to climb to her feet without the aid of her arms and Sollux stared on, impressed before flinching in shock when the girl threw her head back and screamed behind the gag before charging head first for the nearest wall, literally.

 

He winced at the loud 'thump!' that echoed in the room once her head made contact and swore under his breath when she bashed her head against the wall again. and again. and again. She kept going, taking pauses in between to cry out in pain or gather her strength to keep standing, until the metallic smell of blood tinted the air and she just...stopped, falling to the floor like a ragdoll. Living his entire life in a soulless pit had granted him a good sense of death and it took him only a moment to recognize that the girl was definitely not breathing anymore. He sighed. Great, as if his cell wasn't already the epitome of immaculate cleanliness, n0w he was stuck in it with a corpse. He fell back unto his narrow cot, staring up at the dark ceiling.

 

Not even a minute later, he heard rustling. Sollux turned his head to the side, confused and just as he started to consider having just imagined it, the rustling came again, followed by a groan and more rustling. Sollux frowned and pushed himself up to sit, eyebrows furrowing. His gaze fell on the girl again, she was still on the floor but she was moving. His frown got deeper, he was sure she'd been dead, he was _sure_ of it.

 

Yet there she was, groaning as she pulled herself up to a kneeling position, arms still bound. The gag was mostly dislodged from the lethal psychotic episode she just had. She spat it out weakly and it sagged out of her mouth, soft with spit and blood. There was a hoarse, exhausted sigh that spoke of weariness that was bone deep and then, a laugh.

 

"Fuck dammit, still alive."

 

The girl clicked her tongue then there was the sound of rustling again, this time accompanied by small grunts and swears. Sollux observed her intently, fascinated and curious as she pulled herself back to her feet. He held his breath when she ran at the wall again and leant forward a bit when she stopped, heaved out another sigh that plucked at the rickety strings of soul-deep exhaustion and thumped her head against the wall weakly. She stayed like that for a few seconds before slowly, slowly turning her back to the wall and sliding down against it. She sat there on the floor, silent for the longest time. Eventually, her silence was interrupted by a small, hitched breath, and another then there was the soft, raspy sounds of sniffling and little gasps and Sollux sagged a little where he sat. He’d never been this close, _ever_ whenever someone’s very core fractured and broke and now that he was, he _felt_ it, felt her pain, so clearly and so vividly he could swear he felt his chest ache with a heavy weight.

 

“God, Karkat. I hate you so. fucking. much. All you had to do was die, that was it, you couldn’t even do that you stupid, ugly, fat fuck.” The girl bit out in between sobs. “I hate you. I _hate_ you. I hate you more than _anyone_ could ever hate you.”

 

There was a loud sob then the girl craned her neck, the back of her head making a dull thump against the wall.

 

“Do you hear that mom? Do you hear that all you scum-sucking motherfuckers, I hate _MYSELF_ more than _any_ of you could ever hate me! If any of you out there can hear me-”

 

“I can hear you.”

 

The words tumbled out of his lips before he even knew he was going to say them and Sollux actively thrived in the mutual, stunned silence that wrapped around them both for a second before his brain caught up to his mouth and he realized why he’d spoken.

 

Because he _did_ hear her. He understood.

 

“Wh-who said that?” the girl asked warily, squinting into the darkness as she turned her head this way and that, trying to pin point exactly where he was.

 

She froze when her now well-adjusted eyes zeroed in on the tall, thin lump embedded deep into the shadows in the corner and the look on her face implied that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before. She also looked like she was experiencing a healthy dose of fear and Sollux shook his head a little because if there was anyone she should be _least_ afraid of, it should be him. He replayed the past minutes in his mind and it slowly, painfully dawned on him just how different this girl was…from everyone else

 

And how similar she was to him

 

“Who are you?” she asked, she was looking directly at him now.

 

“Someone who hates himself probably as much as you do.”

 

Her eyebrows furrowed and her expression morphed into a distinctly calculating one before she snorted, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “I doubt it.”

 

Sollux scoffed, amused. “You really shouldn’t.”

 

“No, I really should. I’m rude enough to be alive when no one wants me around. Especially me.”

 

Sollux unfolded himself from where he was still curled up on the cot and stood, walking til he was standing under the small, faint rays of moonlight shining in through the barred window. He took a tiny, measured step, angling himself so the light would hit his face and he glanced down at her with his eyes, smirking at how wide they got as they took him in.

 

“Keep talking?” he challenged her.

 

She didn’t, she just kept staring at him with her mouth ever so slightly open and her eyes still frozen in disbelief.

 

“What? You didn’t think you were the only one who deserved to be here do you? this, precious little pit of insanity and torture… Karkat?”

 

Karkat slowly closed her mouth and her features melted into a contemplative look as she shook her head. She scoffed out a laugh. “No, I guess not.”

 

She carved a place for her in his life after that, burrowed into the fabric of his existence so easily, it was as if she was _made_ to fit in it. Sollux didn’t find it hard to believe since the moment he _met_ her he knew. The world held up a mirror to him in the form of an angry, sad, lonely girl who reflected every inch of the pain he’d known all his life right back at him. He understood her and she understood him. She was so familiar, yet so different, whatever part of Sollux’s existence that isn’t the raw, gaping wound stuffed with tortured misery was a dark, empty void littered with traces of apathy but Karkat, she was more than her pain, much more.

 

He’d think it was because she’s had a life outside of the pit she got thrown into but as Sollux watched her form bonds with people, when he watched her break her own hand so she could sneak the little cat girl out of her cell and take her to the scary slab of inhumanly strong muscle all the way across the asylum, as she told him that it was because the cat girl had promised the muscle freak she wouldn’t let him die alone, he saw it in the way her face fell as she recounted how the little cat girl had curled up next to her friend as the appalling amount of steroids that’d been infused into his body destroyed it from the inside out.

 

He saw it every time she sat there and swallowed her self-deprecation while she let the vampire girl from the floor above groom her hair and call her pretty because she believed the latter and because she insisted to do the former as a token of her gratitude whenever Karkat let her drink her blood because the whitecoats hadn’t given her enough. He saw it everytime the two of them argued about who hated themselves more and ended up getting into a real, ugly fight. It wasn’t just in her eyes, the way she looked at him. It was in the way she’d hug him until he stopped being angry and let the pain flow, the way she would pull him to the floor and place his head on her lap so she could stroke his hair and shush him until he stops crying.

 

She was a righteous mess of a person, she reminded you of the lady with the blonde hair. She had that similar light in her, empathetic, nurturing and just so goddamned _kind_ it _had_ to be inherent. But with all that good in her she could never channel it to herself, infact all that good was inversely proportional to how much she loathed herself. She admitted to him once that she did all the things she did, “Be Kanaya’s personal food supply because not like I’d ever run out anyway, Be Nepeta’s space heater now that there’s no Equius to cuddle up to when it’s cold, I just do it because if I can’t do anything else right at least there’s this. It’s not a lot but it makes me feel like less of a shitty person.”

 

But Sollux knew it was more than that, he doesn’t know how or why he just _knew_ it in his bones that redemption wasn’t her motive. He probably knew it the same way she “knew” that _he_ wasn’t ugly and useless and repulsive. It was as if the universe found it to be a grand cosmic joke to take whatever piece of themselves that can be deemed of any worth and hide it in each other so that the other could see it so clearly when they never could.

 

She did what he thought no one else could ever do after the lady with blonde hair abandoned him. She gave Sollux a friend, a stubborn, infuriating, stupid friend but a friend nevertheless. In fact she might even be his bestfriend or…perhaps even more than that if things were different.

 

Most of his days now, he spends with his mouth locked with hers, sneaking around in the shadows, hiding his secrets in her skin and absorbing hers with his lips. They’ve been like this shortly after Terezi managed to burn the asylum, which is so long ago now that the memory seems to get fuzzier the more Sollux tries to remember and after all that time, after daring to play outside the vague, unspoken rules he and Karkat set up around this thing that they’re doing that night when the leaves were blowing in through the cracked window he’s come to admit.

 

There’s a small whisper deep down that he doesn’t hesitate to listen to anymore, that yearns for something more, something more than her averted eyes as she slips back into her straitjacket and pyjamas, words to fill in the silence right before they part ways temporarily just to meet again later on, syllables to be connected to what he sees in her eyes, the same thing she sees in his Sollux is sure.

 

He wants all those things so bad, they were so close he can’t stand it but he knows he can’t and she can’t. Because having those things comes with territory that’s extremely unfamiliar and scary and he just…can’t.

 

Sollux comes so close though. So damn close to breaking that silence and just telling her the things he’s said so many times without words.

 

He’s kept the blonde lady’s necklace throughout the years, everyone knows how important it is to him, if they don’t, they know that it _is_ important. He was in the tunnels with everyone else because it was Feferi’s birthday, it’s a mystery how the hell she even knows that and why she even bothers to “celebrate” but no one is to begrudge the optimistic, bubbly fish girl a little happiness in her sewer-bound life so they all go along with it on that random date every so often when she would declare that its her birthday and invite them all down. Besides, it wasn’t like they had better things to do anyway.

 

Sollux was still not in necessarily good terms with Feferi but he’d long ago surpassed being silently angry and are now just unbearably awkward around her. She just went back to being as friendly and happy with him however, probably because it’s easier for her so he just let her, much to the displeasure of the only other slimy sewer-dweller in the asylum. Eridan has never liked him and Sollux never even had an errant thought of what it could be like to like him. It was about Feferi at first and it pisses Sollux off so much now that everyone knows (he’s pretty sure they do) he’s sleeping with Karkat and he still wouldn’t let it go. Evidently he was just being a huge dick.

 

He picks another fight with Sollux when Feferi tries to engage him in pleasant conversation and she stands there helplessly, interjecting worriedly every now and again only to be ignored as the two square off. Sollux is ready to just walk away and give Eridan a one fingered salute over his shoulder but before he could, the asshole grabs him by the front of his shirt, just near the neck.

 

Sollux has been wearing an old nurse’s uniform all these years and he keeps his prized necklace in the small pocket on the chest. It goes flying out when Eridan yanks him forward and Sollux yells out a curse as he roughly shoves him away. The necklace sails in an arc over the air and plops down into the bright green water.

 

“You fucker!” he yells, landing a punch right on Eridan’s jaw. He narrows his eyes at him and moves in for a vengeful blow but is stopped when Feferi and Karkat, who were the closest to them, pulled them away from each other and stood between them.

 

“Alright, Eridan’s a world-class douche, he’s not worth it.” Karkat hisses, one hand on Sollux’s chest, the other on his shoulder. He looks down at her, still pissed and she glares up at him until Sollux releases an explosive sigh through his nose and take a step back.

 

Sollux looks up to see Feferi trying to command Eridan to apologize, he ignores her until she rolls her eyes, mutters something venomously under her breath and dives into the water. She pops back up after a second and beams up at Sollux. “I’ll get it, don’t you worry!” she says before disappearing back under. She stays down for a few minutes and when she comes back up, she was wincing, eyes wide with regret.

 

“I…uhh…can’t get it back.”

 

Karkat speaks for Sollux. “Why the fuck not?”

 

Feferi worries at her bottom lip with her teeth and she glances behind her as if looking down at something. “It fell into one of these…cages. The doctors built it there to keep some of the umm, more dangerous ones under.”

 

“I’m not hearing an answer.” Karkat says

 

Feferi turns back around and frowns, eyebrows furrowed. “They’re open, have been for a long time, we used to think they’d have broken by now but…Cronus died in one of those things. He swam into it once and the doors, these sharp, jagged spike-things closed in on him, like a steel trap.”

 

“That was a long time ago” Karkat protests.

 

Feferi opens her mouth to say something but Karkat doesn’t let her, she just groans, irritated and before Sollux or anyone else can stop her, she mutters “I’ll go then.” And jumps into the water. Sollux’s throat tightens a bit, worried. He’d silently agreed with Karkat’s deduction about the cages. They should be old and broken by now but still…knowing Karkat’s luck it-

 

There was a muffled metallic clang, the ground reverberates with it and Sollux’s blood turns into ice as everyone stands there in shocked silence, frozen. A thin, smoky ribbon of red rises to the surface of the water and Sollux feels just like he did that time when Karkat didn’t completely fail to hurt herself and almost-

 

Feferi dives back down in the next split second and to everyone’s surprise, Eridan dives after her. Sollux clenches his hands into fists and he waits anxiously, digging his nails further into his palms as seconds turned into minutes and more blood rises up to the surface. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when they resurface with an unconscious, bleeding karkat between them. She was badly cut up and there were bits of sharp things sticking into her arms and random spots on her person but she was in one piece. Feferi and Eridan haul her over to dry ground and you glare, hackles rising when Eridan immediately hauls himself out and crouches over Karkat like it was his job to take care of her, grasping her wrist and lightly tapping at her cheek.

 

“Kar? Kar!” He calls out to her, putting his face right next to hers, ear a breaths width away from her mouth. Sollux non-too subtly elbows him aside, grabbing hold of Karkat’s shoulders and shaking her. “KK! KK wake up!”

 

He waits, expecting her to open her eyes, swear, pluck at the foreign objects cushioned on her flesh but she doesn’t. and doesn’t. and still continues not to so much as breathe as the minute mark approaches once, twice, three times.

 

Sollux swears he feels his insides collapse as the words shake themselves out of his pale lips. “She’s not moving. Why isn’t she moving?”

 

Suddenly Kanaya is there and he numbly lets her nudge him aside as she prods around Karkat’s neck, hunting for a pulse. Sollux’s hearts continue to sink in his chest as fear consumes him irrationally fast.

 

He was an inch away from flipping the fuck out when Kanaya gasps and turns Karkat’s head to the side and hurriedly yanks out a thick shard of metal embedded in the upper back side of Karkat’s neck, right into her hairline. When she does, Sollux snaps into action and turns Karkat’s head back the way it was, staring at her face intently for signs of life.

 

Her gasp sounds odd when she opens her eyes and if he weren’t so focused on her, he’d have probably realized that it sounded weird because his own gasp was mixed with it.

 

“Fucking Christ KK, what the hell?” he says, slapping her weakly on the gut. His hand might have shaken a bit.

 

Karkat gasps and coughs for the next little while and when she can speak she glares up at him, raising one hand to show the necklace wrapped around her fingers. “You’re supposed to be saying thank you, you ungrateful cunt.”

 

Sollux scoffs out his relief and shakes his head, gazing down at her with a crooked smile. “Thanks you insufferable dick.”

 

Karkat does what he predicted she’d do before she nearly gave him a double heart attack and she brushes off everyone’s concern after cracking her neck and shifting around a little. Nobody fusses over her…much when it was time to leave and go back to their separate corners of the place but Karkat brushes off those who do in that rude, prickly, overdone way she does.

 

Sollux frowns and glares with enough derision to smite him where he stands when Eridan approached Karkat and voiced his concern. He restrains himself from wanting to hit him when he touches her arm and he feels resentment flood him from head to toe when he watches, _really_ watches the way Eridan talks to her, the way he looks at her. Sollux doesn’t like it, he hates it, because he finally figures out why Eridan was still being a humongous prick to him and because Karkat is _his_ plain and simple.

 

The incident rattles Sollux enough that late that night, long after the moon had risen and the sun is just a few hours away from chasing it away, Karkat notices and she loosens the tangle of limbs he’d caught her in to look up at him.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

He kisses her to hide the answers Sollux has no doubt she’ll find no trouble seeing on his face.

 

He kisses her slower, deeper. He touches her with a certain tinge of insistence to his actions, like he’s verifying for himself that she’s really there. Karkat definitely notices the difference and she doesn’t stop being curious about it.

 

“Stop thinking.” He whisper into her ear before catching the lobe with his teeth.

 

Karkat sighs, fingertips leisurely mapping out Sollux’s bare back. “Sure, you just tell me what’s going on in that twisted little head of yours and I will.”

 

Sollux breathes out an amused scoff against her neck as he follows it down to her collarbones with his mouth. “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”

 

He hears Karkat’s lips part to say something and he moves his hips down faster, harder, startling the words out of her mind and sealing them in her throat with his lips.

 

Sollux manages to keep her quiet for the next little while and as he does, he relishes in the feel of her warm skin against his, the taste of her on his lips and the soft sound of her gasps and moans in his ears. He delights in them more than usual and clutches her fingers tight, pinning her hands above her head as she calls his name out in a breathy whisper.

 

Afterwards, she falls asleep and Sollux stays awake, just watching her as if afraid she’s going to go off and get herself killed no matter how unlikely that would be. He’s trapped in that worry and the relief washes over him again and again with every minute that passes when he realizes she’s here and she’s fine.

 

He touches her cheek, feather light and careful as he holds the necklace she would’ve died for in his other hand. He stares at the tarnished silver, the tiny pink gem in the middle. Sollux’s brain attempts to link them to those rosy eyes, the ones that looked at him with something that made him want to look back and stay alive long enough to keep looking but the second it pulls the image from his memory, it changes to a pair of wide brown ones cradled by dark shadows.

 

His eyes flick over to them and Karkat’s eyelashes flutter against her cheek when he runs a finger gently over her brow. Sollux lets go of the necklace, not caring where it lands and he doesn’t look away when he hears it clutter to the floor.

 

Yeah…there wasn’t much he couldn’t live without.


End file.
